PayPal Mafia
The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former
History
Originally, PayPal was a money-transfer service offered by a company called Confinity, which was acquired by X.com in 1999. Later, X.com was renamed PayPal and purchased by eBay in 2002.[3] The original PayPal employees had difficulty adjusting to eBay's more traditional corporate culture and within four years all but 12 of the first 50 employees had left.[4] They remained connected as social and business acquaintances,[4] and a number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined.[3] The term[5] gained even wider exposure when a 2007 article in Fortune magazine used the phrase in its headline and featured a photo of former PayPal employees in gangster attire.[5]
Members
Individuals whom the media refers to as members of the PayPal Mafia include:[5][4]
- Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and former chief executive officer who is sometimes referred to as the "don" of the PayPal Mafia
- Max Levchin, founder and chief technology officer at PayPal
- Elon Musk, co-founder of Zip2, founder of X.com which merged with Confinity to form PayPal. Musk later founded SpaceX, invested in, co-founded Tesla, Inc., co-founded OpenAI, Neuralink, founded The Boring Company, and purchased Twitter
- Yammer
- Scott Banister, early advisor and board member at PayPal[6]
- Roelof Botha, former PayPal CFO who later became a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital
- Steve Chen, former PayPal engineer who co-founded YouTube
- Aviary
- Ken Howery, former PayPal CFO who became a partner at Founders Fund
- Chad Hurley, former PayPal web designer who co-founded YouTube
- WND Books and co-founded CapLinked
- Jawed Karim, former PayPal engineer who founded YouTube
- Jared Kopf, executive assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal who co-founded Slide, HomeRun and NextRoll
- Dave McClure, former PayPal marketing director, a super angel investor for startup companies
- Andrew McCormack, co-founder of Valar Ventures
- Luke Nosek, PayPal co-founder and former vice president of marketing and strategy, became a partner at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery
- Jack Selby, former vice president of corporate and international development at PayPal who co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel, later becoming managing director of Grandmaster Capital Management
- Kiva.org
- Russel Simmons, former PayPal engineer who later co-founded Yelp
- Jeremy Stoppelman, former vice president of technology at PayPal who later co-founded Yelp
- Yishan Wong, former engineering manager at PayPal, later worked at Facebook, became the CEO of Reddit, and founded Terraformation Inc.
- private venturesand some of the successful startups.
Legacy
The PayPal Mafia is sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the
Politics
Some members of the group, such as Peter Thiel, David O. Sachs and Elon Musk, later expressed libertarian and conservative political views.[9]
See also
References
- ^ Staff Writer. "David Sacks: Biography". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2013.
- ^ Harris, Duke (October 22, 2009). "PayPal finally poised to enter Web 2.0". San Jose Mercury News.
- ^ a b c d e f Helft, Miguel (October 17, 2006). "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley". The New York Times.
- ^ ISBN 978-1501197260.
- ^ a b c "The PayPal Mafia". Fortune. November 13, 2007.
- ^ Gelles, David (April 1, 2015). "The PayPal Mafia's Golden Touch". New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
- ^ Banks, Marcus (May 16, 2008). "Nonfiction review: 'Once You're Lucky'". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ Tweney, Dylan (November 15, 2007). "How PayPal Gave Rise to a Silicon Valley 'Mafia'". Wired.
- ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved March 16, 2024.